Next Year in Jerusalem
by Kira Sharp
Summary: Albus Dumbledore attends the ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Nurmengard, when he runs into a familiar face where he least expects it. A foray into the world of Laazov's award-winning story "Goldstein," where a black-hatted yeshivah kid named Yehudah staggers confusedly into Hogwarts to try to find his place in the Jewish world and the magical one.
1. Foreword

_Foreword is forewarned..._

What is that Hebrew book doing on Albus Dumbledore's shelf? Mahogany and black and gold: do you see it up there? Between the Philomagus histories and Father Kenseki's _Fiat Lux_? How on earth did an English schoolmaster come across a single volume of the rare _Mikraot Gedolot haSeter? _Who on earth dropped the gold to buy him such a rare and expensive volume... and why did the miserly giver stop at one instead of treating the illustrious defeater of Grindelwald to the whole boxed set of five?

This charming little drabble by RangerDov about a _sefer _on Professor Dumbledore's desk set me thinking about the Jewish magical experience in the world of Harry Potter. In the award-winning fanfiction "Goldstein," Laazov takes us on an epic journey of faith and open-mindedness alongside Potter's black-hatted yeshivish classmate Anthony/Yehudah Goldstein. Poor Yehudah feels so terribly alone at Hogwarts, without a single other _Yiddishe neshamah_ to keep him company as an Orthodox Jewish wizard. But one of these days, out Yehudah is going to grow up and go out into the world, and he's going to find out that he's not the only one... What sort of world might be out there waiting for him?

Turn the electronic page for some world building in the marvelous universe of J.K. Rowling, wherein Dumbledore introduces us to some of his old friends. And yes, young Goldstein will appear in the epilogue four years from now. But that's not going to be for a while, so you should finish your degree and get some _parnassah_ in the meantime.


	2. Chapter 1 - Liberation Day

**Chapter 1: Liberation Day**

* * *

_To RangerDov, for starting it all, and to all those who know better than to call themselves heroes._

* * *

_Credidi propter quod locutus sum ego autem humiliatus sum nimis. – Vulgate Psalter 115:1_

_"I believed, and therefore I spoke out, but I have been exceedingly humbled."_

The icy March wind blew cold on the fiftieth anniversary of Liberation Day at Nurmengard. It whipped the somber hangings behind the podium and tugged mercilessly at the brimmed hats of the dignitaries. It ruffled the beard of Matthias Bettenhausen and rustled the pages of his carefully prepared speech. It cut straight through Albus Dumbledore's fur-lined robes like a blast of ice, and blew his blue hood over into his eyes as he shuffled uncomfortably at the back of the crowd.

Dumbledore's fingers itched to call up a warming spell and he wondered why none of the officials in charge of this year's commemoration hadn't banished the rotten weather to Kingdom Come. He cantankerously wondered if the idea was to remind the fighters just how cold it had been in the dungeons of Nurmengard. He castigated himself for his selfishness-this old man could stand a little breeze about the nadgers. The survivors had endured worse than this. He had never seen Nurmengard from the inside except as a righteous conqueror on his tour of victory.

Grindelwald's prison had been-and still was-a cruel, cold, gale-swept sea crag of horror without even a single dry perch to balance on. This needless spectacle was at the old Rathaus of Gdansk, where the Zauberrat had dragged its hapless prisoners. Its splendid 500-year-old Gothic facade had been a notable piece of civic architecture before Gellert and his minions had taken the building as a staging ground for their fearsome arrests, their mock trials, and their secret police raids. Its ruins had nightmares enough for all.

Dumbledore counted on the dais three stuffed German shirts and five over-inflated Slavic demagogues, wrapped smugly in robes of power neither earned nor deserved. It was all very well to talk about international cooperation and magical brotherhood, but he much doubted if any of these praters would be so quick to come to England's aid when rumors of Lord Voldemort's return began recirculating around the British Isles. They had been little enough help when the Death Eaters first rose, and even now they had loudly praised his Tri-Wizard tournament and quietly failed to appear in the box seats. Even one or two European reporters would have given that horrible Skeeter woman a run for her money. But Bettenhausen was so much more comfortable admiring the past than seeing to the present. It was so tidy, so reassuringly final. "A glorious victory for the forces of Virtue…" he heard Matthtias drone on. Dumbledore suppressed a, "Tcha!" of disgust. _Non omnis belli gloria et universum infernum._

Witches and wizards who'd sacrificed their lives or their souls knew better than to use the word "glorious." Dumbledore scanned the crowd in search of the real heroes of the day, those who knew what the victory had cost. Old Pankoscova couldn't travel, of course, at her age, but her granddaughter Petra had been given her place of honor. Adrienne Olivier was up on the stage as well, her hands folded in her lap. She seldom appeared in public after the Hydenplatz trials; Gellert's cronies had ruined her good name when her quill came too close to the truth, and the accusations levied against her had never entirely been forgotten. Even in her isolation, Dumbledore could almost envy Mme. Olivier her clean conscience. His reputation had not been tarnished overmuch by accusations of evasion of duty and all-around stalling, but in his case, the accusations came loudest from inside his own grey head. There were quite a lot of witches and wizards assembled here today whom Albus Dumbledore would rather not have had to encounter a second time.

At the front of the crowd stood Borislav Krum, straight and tall, representing his father Georg. Dumbledore made a mental note to avoid him at the reception; nothing could make a disagreeable weekend worse than having a parent interrupting it to bother him about school matters. Laslow and Leszer Dobszai's names appeared on the program, but the brothers themselves were not visible anywhere. That meant nothing, or course; Dumbledore highly doubted that Dark wizard catchers of their reputation would wish to display their persons unprotected on a crowded stage for all the world to see, even if they were honored dignitaries of the post-Grindelwald years. Asher Laskov, on a similar note, was nowhere in sight, and Dumbledore didn't put it past him to have disguised himself as one of the security witches, frisking honored guests for Dark devices-if he had bothered to return to Europe at all. Ameena Khan had returned, in memory of her daughter Nisa; she stood with the entourage from India next to Ching She and the Chinese officials, clustered around the soul tablets of their lost ones. Kasha Oktyabrskaya had brought an entourage as well, and Dumbledore was pleased to see in the velvet-roped barriers behind her what looked like several classes of Durmstrang students, cloaked and booted in their school uniforms, standing respectfully behind their teacher. That was teaching, Dumbledore thought approvingly. Kasha could never be bothered with empty words when somewhere out there, she could be doing instead. You didn't hear much from her until you felt her wand in the small of your back.

It wasn't like they hadn't asked him to speak, of course. But Dumbledore had no interest in endless committee meetings in Worms, and he was too wise to allow Irina's starry-eyed hero-worship to flatter him into making an ass of himself. Dumbledore had not spent over a hundred years restraining his titanic sense of self-importance only to fall into orbit around his own ego in his dotage. And even if he had accepted the proffered honors, even if he had wished again to take up the reins of destiny, to bask in the glory as Bettenhausen and the rest were doing, there were too many people in the crowd who had longer memories than young Irina did, memories of a puppet-master, a sacrificer of other people's chess pieces, a scheming eminence gris, a false messiah. The fact that Dumbledore's hands had been tied was no real excuse. He was a foolish old man undoing the work of a foolish young man. He was no one's hero, and imagining that he deserved the spotlight only made him deserve it less. He had come to the memorial, of course, but he had come in respect as a pilgrim, not in triumph for one last hurrah as the hero of the day. Strain their eyes as they might, they might not even recognize him in his obscure corner at the back the crowd. And that was as it should be. His part was to bow low, place a wreath of memory, and disappear. Or it would be, if those interminable old windbags on the stage would give it a rest already.

The minutes ticked by. Dumbledore wiped the drip off the end of his nose and considered all the important things he might otherwise have been doing with the rest of a blustery March morning. A weekend's holiday in Europe might better have been spent amassing allies in Albania or hobnobbing with hobgoblins in Hopfolstadt. He could have been in the library of the _Hochbrauaufgehaltensvolksbibliothek_ gathering information on the winter's Krampus sightings and their correlation with the winter solstice. Or, he thought with a pang, he could have been laying flowers on the mass grave in Transylvania and commemorating the day in peace and tranquility. Social anxiety and an uncomfortable sense of conscience made his heels twitch. "Five more minutes and I am simply going to vanish," he promised his itchy boots for the third time. "Really, now. This time I mean it."

Fifteen minutes later, Dumbledore's patience was at an end. He had come all this way to pay his respects at the Nurmengard memorial, with or without the self-important pointy hats on stage. He fumbled with the translation of the _Linea Vexillum Six_* and could only come up with, _Holdmyplaceinlineicus!_—his diction was atrocious, but the desired result was achieved: a faint but reasonable simulacrum of Albus Dumbledore, Listening Attentively remained to hold his place in the back of the crowd as he wandered away. Around the edge of the ruins Dumbledore contentedly trudged, through a locked stone gate that presented him no hindrance whatsoever, and he then he was standing in the Nurmengarden itself.

* "The Line of the Six Flags"


	3. Chapter 2 - In the Nurmengarden

**Chapter 2: In the Nurmengarden**

_Pretiosa in conspectu Domini mors sanctorum eius. -Vulgate Psalter 115:6_

"_Too costly in God's eyes is the death of His faithful."_

It was always winter in the Nurmengarden, but the chill was somehow gone. The wind that had been so cold and merciless outside the garden walls blew here with a soft breeze, gently rustling the frozen boughs so that they tinkled like wind chimes. Diamond droplets of ice dripped from the shining branches, frozen in time. Spots of light sparkled off the green patina of the copper ivy leaves and the steely silver glow of the willow trees, each a soft untarnished grey in the morning light. Dumbledore stepped forward for a closer look. On each burnished leaf was a name.

The breeze followed him down the garden path, nibbling at his heels as he took in the scenery. Each leaf was a person, each tree a city, each terrace a moment in history. Wizards and Muggles rustled side by side in quiet unity, shining and peaceful. Dumbledore saw the old village of Stazzema carved in graceful relief across a stone bench, little towers encircling the wee mountain peaks, quaint and medieval in its glory days before it had been wiped out "for the greater good." He paused to examine the sculpting. The work had been done by a Muggle, if he was any judge, a master stone carver: good solid work with no dancing little enchantments to gild the lily. Nothing moved in the garden but himself.

A little bridge led over a meandering stream. Dumbledore ambled across it as his eye fell on a thorny little arch of rosebushes, frost blooming across the black leaves. This was surely one of the monuments to the resistance. He stepped off the path to examine it more closely, and wound his way carefully through tinkling snowdrops to the little arbor. The black iron thorns rose in curves, sharp and uncompromising against the white sky. Where each withered bud should have been sparkled a little globe of ice. From out of the corner of his eye, Dumbledore caught a flash of movement. He bent for a closer inspection, and up from the little icy sphere, a tiny face turned towards him.

Dumbledore lifted his glasses and peered under them for a clearer view. A young girl's face smiled up at him. She was holding something-a book, perhaps?-and pointing him towards something she was reading. The scene grew clearer the longer he looked. A child at home with her family, reading with her mother.

Dumbledore did not recognize the girl, nor the name on her black leaf. She had given her life standing up against Grindelwald. Willingly? Accidentally? She was gone now, and no one could tell him her story. He examined the other icy drops minutely, each a memory encased in ice: warm faces smiling up from schoolyards and coffeehouses, old faces and young, proudly showing him their treasures. An old woman nodded with dignity from a church pew. A young man held up a swaddled infant. Dumbledore wondered who they had been and how they had died. How they had lived. Surely, surely, none of this had been for the greater good.

How could he have been so young, so foolish as to have mistaken his and Gell's dreams of glory for the greater good! Might borne of right, truth borne of intelligence, the mantle of leadership earned by wisdom. Order from chaos, the injustices of the world made right by reason, magic triumphant at last over death. In the end, their dreams had propagated nothing but death and ruination. Gell had believed in the supreme power of Death to end all, and there he was, wrong even in defeat, still alive in the highest cell of Nurmengard. And Albus, who believed in the supreme power of love to transform all? He had never truly loved again. He stood alone in the garden of lost hopes and frozen dreams, still no closer to the greater good. Perhaps somewhere in a forgotten corner of this garden was a tiny dewdrop with the face of a laughing young man, a beautiful and clever young man, a brilliant and fiery young man, a young man of talent and promise, frozen in the moment before his gifts were squandered and his talents put to waste.

No. He would not mourn Gellert Grindelwald in the garden of his victims. Dumbledore strode away from the arbor in search of a leaf for Etienne, another beautiful and clever young man who had leaped into the breach on the advice of the teacher he loved. He looked for Nisa Khan who smuggled Rosier's secret plans out of Paris and for Anna Szenes who orchestrated jailbreaks out of Budapest. For Dobszai's wife and Laskov's wife and the children they had borne. It was for them he had come.

He found Bishop Abrahamyan in a quiet little copse at the edge of a still grey pool. Dumbledore sat down for a moment on a stone pedestal and thought about the mighty old man who had stood in the doorway of his church with his wand in his hand. He thought about all the nameless Muggles who had died with him and tried his best to consider each one of them in turn, to give one moment of his time in their memory. He looked back on the one December night he had visited Abrahamyan in his little Apostolic see, the candlelit faces of the Muggles as they made their way to worship. A breeze ruffled his hood and Dumbledore looked up in wonder to see a new string of crystal drops blossom from Abrahamyan's bough, the Muggle faces from his memory bobbing in each little globe. Liberated from his mind's eye, they joined their holy father in bearing witness. _And in death they were not divided,_ thought Dumbledore gravely.

At the other side of the pool, almost hidden from view, another figure stood motionless in a under a weeping willow. Dumbledore could not help but smile. Of all the impish reprobates who could beat Albus Dumbledore in a Breaking and Entering contest, it had to be Jan Kmetko. Much water had flowed under that bridge since they had been close. Jan's brown eyes met Dumbledore's and he gave a solemn nod. Dumbledore nodded back, unsmiling.

Jan had found his family's tree without blundering about-naturally. Jan was never the type to flounder around inventing things when one glance at the directions would set him right. There must be a map. Of course there must. A map that any legitimate guest coming in properly in line at the front gates of the Nurmengarden would have freely been given. Curious, Dumbledore closed his eyes and gently appraised the network of magical currents that flowed through the air.

It was a Csardi and Bode linkage of the most ordinary design, linking landscape and visitant, origins and intentions, hearts and souls and steps on the path. Love, loss, honor, and memory flowed through the grid to lead the searching wizard down the path towards an address as clear as The Albert Memorial, Kensington Gardens, London. It was no difficult magic at all—even a few Muggles, mad as March hares, were known to babble about "ley lines" after stumbling across a map with a living spirit. The Nurmengarden was alive. Under its meandering paths and aluminum groves, invisible golden lines thrummed with sorrow, tenderness, regret, and pain. Dumbledore idly wondered if Muggles were allowed in. Under the circumstances, it seemed hardly fitting to discriminate against them. However, the practicalities were undoubtedly such a nuisance that some hardheaded committee might just have added insult to injury and congratulated themselves on a job well done.

Dumbledore followed the map around the reflecting pool and back towards the main gates. There was Jan's trail, a blaze of reverence mixed with willfulness, sashaying in without any officious twit giving him leave to pay his respects to his own people. There was his, Dumbledore's own trail, a light pattering of self-conscious footsteps. There were the two officials at the main gate, oscillating quietly until the crush of people directed them about their duties. And there was someone else. Dumbledore was sure of it. Another trespasser. Under the main lines, a master wizard had covered his tracks, creeping out of sight towards the base of the ruins where his rage blazed up like a beacon, incinerating lines and snapping connections like a detonator. He was here without leave. He had come to defy.

* * *

**Further Reading for Muggles:**

_Interested Muggles are invited to peruse biographical information on Mariya Oktyabrskaya, Noor Inayat Khan, Hannah Senesh, Irina Sendler, and Archbishop Demaskinos, for whom their magical counterparts are named. Very interested Muggles can look up how to pronounce Slavic names and profit from the instruction._

_Equally curious readers may also wish to look up the defense of the post office of Gdansk (Danzig) at the outbreak of WWII. I do not recall at the moment how many European countries held out for less time than said post office._

_On the web can be found various articles in complex network analysis by Gabor Csardi and Michael Bode. I can't make this stuff up. I can only assume Broderick Bode is in the same business as his cousin Mike._


	4. Chapter 3 - The Towers

**Chapter 3: The Towers**

* * *

_For BankStreet and Pangolin... may you go from strength to strength._

* * *

_Moschil b'genut u'mesayem b'shevach… odd she-yigmor kol haparashah kulah._

_"Let him begin with the lowest and end with the highest… until he completes the entire story." -Tractate Pesachim 116a_

Dumbledore's pace quickened. For the first time, he noticed the careful Feng Shui of the gravel paths, the mile long patterns of peace and tranquility into which he had carelessly stepped. He should have noticed the other set of footprints, scattering pebbles and kicking grit onto the polished steps ahead of him. This man had not been searching for arbors of lost ones. His track led straight forward as he stormed towards his destination. The ruined gables of Grindelwald's Rathaus creaked unpleasantly overhead.

In spite of himself, Dumbledore shivered. This ancient stronghold had been the center of the Battle of Danzig, and its stones resonated with more curses than even he could name. A miasma of evil rose from its ruined cellars; the foundations were propped up by spells to prevent the entire structure from collapsing onto the Muggle buildings on either side. There was a reason no plants would grow on this soil. Nothing lay buried here that he wished to disturb. It was the domain of ghosts.

At his feet, half buried in rubble, lay the great Gothic doors of the prison compound. It was through this arch that the thugs of the Iron Triangle dragged their victims, many of whom never to be seen again. The doors leaned in on a crazy angle, as flat as a cellar door, obscured by fallen masonry, steel ivy, and the grime of the years. Dumbledore saw clearly where the dust had been disturbed.

The committee had wished to rebuild the compound, a museum in the middle of the Nurmengarden, a public record of how Gellert and his mad hordes had tortured and humiliated their victims. Dumbledore had picked up a quill on the instant to lodge his formal protest. The new generation of Death Eaters needed no additional inspiration. He would have no witch or wizard alive rebuilding what Gellert Grindelwald had built.

The lock on the ruined staircase was pathetically easy to release, and any curses which may have barred the gate had apparently been dismantled by the intruder. Dumbledore could see his footsteps clearly in the piles of grit and cobwebs leading down, down into the darkness. His wand was in his hand before he took another step. He continued forward by its light.

Down, down the ruined staircase stretched, towards the yawning hole of Grindelwald's dungeons. The footsteps marched straight and true though piles of rubble and through mounds of rotted wood, across corridors and through gaping doorways. Dumbledore had never been in the Rathaus before, and his mind was afire as he ticked off the possibilities of what might lie ahead. One thing was certain. His quarry knew his way here very well indeed.

Daylight suddenly streamed in upon him from the shaft of a ruined lift. The defunct chamber had provided ample handholds for the intruder to climb his way up into the light. They were at the center of the compound now, at the base of the main building. The great house stretched three stories above Dumbledore's head now, leaning like the Tower of Pisa. He could feel the spells straining against gravity to keep the edifice upright. Dumbledore eyed the climb askance as he tucked his wand into his belt. Unless he was much mistaken, he was following in the footsteps of a much younger and spryer man.

Dumbledore rolled his shoulders in their sockets and stretched his arms a few times in feeble preparation. With a deep breath, he wedged his left foot into the nearest gap and pulled himself up with both arms. The Baroque bricklayer had laid his gewgaws generously, and he made his way up by painful stages, stretching and shuffling to keep his balance. A stray brick dislodged itself with a crack when he put his weight upon it-he leaped for the handhold in the ruined brickwork and hung on with all his strength. A broken pipe creaked dangerously beneath him as his feet scrambled for purchase, but after several breathtaking seconds, his boots found the edge of a cornice. Dumbledore hung there for several seconds, breathing painfully. A few feet above his hands, he could see the hanging edge of another staircase.

Dumbledore tried not to think of what errand would entice a wizard to break a trail through Grindelwald's ruined fortress on the fiftieth anniversary of his defeat. He wondered how many minutes' climb he would gain on the man ahead of him with a levitation spell, and how long he could hold on right-handed if he reached for his wand with his left. The little tutor inside him lectured ponderously that merely because the back gates had been left undefended was no reason to start incautiously firing off spells in the heart of the cursed fortress. His adventure was already quite dangerous enough without attracting attention to himself. He was not the only one here who could read a map, and it was perhaps unwise to sign his name to a hexed register to be read in glowing golden letters by who-knows-what. The space above him, Dumbledore noticed, was entirely free of cobwebs. His clean hands clutched rock unsoiled by dust. His predecessor had climbed this way, and he had been too wise to use a flying spell. Dumbledore decided to follow his example. With a spring, a scuffle, and one last great heave, his hands gripped flat stone, and he pulled himself onto the flagstones of the great staircase.

Dumbledore lay on his hands and knees for a long moment, the breath under his aching ribs fighting for attention with his racing mind. He was pathetically out of shape, gone to seed like a head of lettuce in the years since Voldemort had disappeared. When he could sit up again without wheezing, he reached down for the map which flowed so many feet beneath him. The gardens were open now, with visitors aplenty strolling along the paths, but he was not interested in them. All he needed was one golden current. He found one and drew it up.

The intruder was still ahead of him, his steps leading up the staircase and towards the east gable. His anger still surged like flashes of lightning, but Dumbledore could not detect any strains of malice. All he could see was pain, waves and waves of searing pain. And the way ahead of him was clear.

From the window of the east gable, a cold blue light suddenly burst forth. Up the steps Dumbledore leapt, two at a time, around the corner and across the landing. He could see the wisps of silver converging on the tower from across the sky, and he could guess what they were. Or who.

His boots smacked the stone steps as he raced upwards, skidding on loose stones and slipping on dusty gravel, pulling his way up the spiral steps with every sconce, ringpost, and torch-mount that came to hand level. Luck was with him as he heaved his way up the crumbling staircase; Dumbledore's weight was firmly on an iron socket when he leaned forward to find the next five steps missing entirely. He heaved backward with all his might to prevent himself from losing his balance. A handful of pebbles skittered off the edge as he slid to a halt.

Just a dozen feet above stood the great iron doors at the top of the steps. Dumbledore could clearly hear the echoing voices within. Dumbledore eyed the ruined flight of steps acidly. He had not come this far only to be stopped by a bit of faulty masonry.

Although choked sunlight came streaming in through the grimy windows, Dumbledore lit up his wand for a closer examination of the premises. He began first with the broken brick that was lying peacefully on thin air, resting solidly in the very place where the steps had not been. The steps were not there, and they persisted in their absence, but in the shapes where they should have been, a faint silvery blue light shimmered. Dumbledore shifted his weight gingerly, and silver-blue stone glowed beneath his outstretched foot. The whole step flickered for a moment, insubstantial to his eyes but rock-hard to his touch.

Slowly, delicately, Dumbledore edged his way out onto a step made of solid memory. These steps were not real to him, but they gleamed in the memory of the man who had come before him with a cold and bitter light. They were more than equal to Dumbledore's weight.

Now he was on solid ground again, and the door was in front of him. This was the door to the Ostgericht, the East Court, where "Das Höhere Wohl" could still be seen etched above the iron doors. "At this point in the ritual, we would read from the sacred scrolls," he heard a living voice seething with derision. "That is, if you lot haven't burned them all."

Dumbledore reached out with his wand. The door opened soundlessly, and he stared into the hall.


	5. Chapter 4 - Facing His Ghosts

**Chapter 4: Facing His Ghosts**

_Va-omar elai: Ben adam, ha-sechayenah ha-Atzamos he-eileh? Va'omar: Hashem Elokim, atah yad'atah._

_He said to me, "O mortal, can these bones live?" "Said I, 'You know, O Lord." -Ezekiel 37:3_

The wizard stood alone on the ruined dais, his pale, angular face shining in the blue light from his wand. His close-cropped hair and beard gave him an almost emaciated look, but he stood tall and proud as he faced the horde of ghosts streaming down the steps of the courtroom. A white striped cloak hung loosely over his shoulders, long fringes dangling past his knees. Sweat poured down his lean features, but his black eyes flashed at the ghosts amassed about him. His lip curled in contempt.

"Ah, it's you, Maybeck!" he addressed a fearsome wraith in a tattered robe whose double-breasted doublet once boasted the brass buttons of an Iron Enforcer. "I don't suppose you remember me, or the little house in Szopron. Did you hear they modified your curse? Those yellow rays you used to practice on us in the dungeons, turning our entrails inside out for your inspection? Maybeck's Rays, for when the Cruciatus Curse just isn't personal enough? Some Healer in Haifa modified your spell, to throw light on internal injuries and curse damage without being invasive. We call them 'Beck's Rays' in your honor. We use them to heal."

"You filthy little worm-magician!" hissed a woman's voice. "You dare take our names for your little Muggle spells?"

"Boast while you can!" rasped a warlock. "In time, the worm will turn. Our followers will yet rise up, and you will fall beneath the heel of the Higher Magic like the filth you are."

Azamos Nachtman cocked his eyebrow. "That's what I heard so many years ago, and here we are, still. Shout your ancient words in this empty theater of hate! They're worthless and dead, as are you. You have no power over us anymore."

"If that's so," snarled another ghost, its hideously deformed face further disfigured by hatred. "Then why have you returned to us? Celebrating your so-called Liberation Day with the ghosts who destroyed your people?"

"To tell you that you did not destroy us," breathed Nachtman. "We live and thrive with our families. We tend fields and write books and kiss our children when they run in each afternoon. What do you miss most about the world, Kraft, stuck in these drafty ruins? The wind on your face? God's good sunshine? A song around the table with a glass in hand and friends all around you? A child's kiss at bedtime before you close your eyes and sleep? The life you tried to take from us has been restored. We live and thrive, while you are no more."

"What do I miss? I miss your wife, Nachtman!" the ghost snarled. Dumbledore would never have recognized Simeon Kraft, one of the Seven Acolytes who had been Grindelwald's closest henchmen. His skeletal remains and grotesquely melted features bore witness to the curse that had destroyed their hideaway. Dumbledore's hand involuntarily lightened on the handle of the great doors. He did not want to hear this.

"Lovely Mirabelle, moaning in the night!" Kraft leered, his mouth twisted in a grimace of pride and hate. "Don't say I have no power over her! Is it you she is thinking of when you hold her in your arms, or me?"

Nachtman's hands were steady on his wand, and he spoke in even, measured tones. "Miriam my wife is one of the most beloved Healers in the Dor Ein-Dor hospital in Jerusalem. She brings babies into this world. She heals people from the curses that have blighted their lives. She is a gentle mother and a talented artist. Our children are everything they are because of her. Despite all you tried to take from her, you neither extinguished her light nor blighted her gifts."

"Gifts!" sneered a ghostly hag behind him. "A Mudblood and a worm-witch!"

"Oh, I'm sure you'd sooner die in the gutter than be carried in to the Dor Ein-Dor," Nachtman smiled at the transparent figure. "There's a special emergency wing for trauma victims waiting for transport to Muggle hospitals, and Muggle doctors and nurses-families of the staff, you see-come for a special research group to teach us new healing techniques. Dor Ein-Dor treats everyone: Christians, Hebrews, Arabs, Druze, Filipinos, even a demon or two! You want the Higher Magic, Karrow—you're looking in the wrong place! Try the open maternity ward under the sigils of Sanvai, Sansavai, and Semengeluf: wizard and Muggle, white and brown, Muslim and Jew, all the new fathers shaking hands and the new mothers smiling fit to burst. There's the higher magic for you. Cooperation and peace. A fresh start for a new generation. You'll never get to see a single flash of it. Your crimes made very sure of that."

His words were almost drowned out in a chorus of spiteful voices. "Crow away, little bird!" screeched a withered wraith at the top of the amphitheater. "You'll never be able to replace what we destroyed! I hope you look in the faces of those little demon brats and see the faces of everyone we slaughtered in your Austrian mudhole!"

"Are the cells in Nurmengard so empty that you had to breed more worms to fill them?" howled Karrow. "How will those chubby little Mudbloods scream when our kind rise up again to destroy the blood traitors who consort with demons and Muggles?"

"You are nothing!" howled a voice from the crowd. "What have you accomplished with your piddling little worm-spells? Building little kingdoms in the sand, populated with Muggles and filth and half-humans!"

"I remember you, Nachtman," Kraft assured him. "Man of the night. Always last, always least. Wasting your talents on stupid Muggles, hiding your power under the ruse of secrecy. You smothered yourself in your pretensions of lowliness. And still, you take pride in your servility. To think of you coming all this way to boast to us! What have you built that was not built better before you? What can you do to undo what we did so thoroughly? What can you do that we did not do better?"

Dumbledore's fists twitched like a spectator at a duel. But his friend, instead of fomenting an answer, closed his eyes and began to sing.

It was not a language Dumbledore recognized, and it took him a few inexcusably dim moments to realize it must be Hebrew. He paused to listen to the haunting melody, absorbing the beauty of the chant before he called up a Malleorum charm to parse the words.

_They have noses, but cannot smell. They have feet, but cannot walk. They have hands, but cannot handle. They make no rational words with their throats. Those who make them will become like them—and everyone who trusts in them._

Dumbledore's memory for Scripture was modest at best, and was not until later that he was able to identify the 115th Psalm. Nachtman's tune changed: it became vigorous, powerful, and full of faith.

_The dead cannot praise God, nor can those who descend to the grave. But we can praise God, now and for all eternity. Alleluia!_

When Azamos Nachtman opened his eyes, he said calmly, "Perhaps I may remind you, Kraft, that the one of us who died in anguish in the dungeons of Nurmengard was not I, but you. You cannot touch me. You cannot frighten me. I walked into this house of my own free will, and I will walk out again. You, however, will remain trapped in ruins, forever locked in the dungeons of your own lifeless hate."

"You're a fool, little Muggle-lover," smirked Kraft. "Come to celebrate the day of your so-called 'liberation' with the ghosts who hate you the most. Why aren't you with your Muggle-loving wife and your brood of brats? You've never really left, have you? Insubstantial as I am, you will never be able to undo what I've done. I call upon all the Furies, in whose existence you are forced to believe, to continue my work under every blue sky in the wizarding world by denying you peace. You'll never be free of me."

"I'll never be free of the _Molluscum_ on my left leg," remarked Dumbledore mildly, casting off the Disillusionment Charm as he strolled down the stairs. "So the Healers tell me. But that doesn't make it more than an irritating little wart! Don't let Tisiphone Furiosa catch you taking her name in vain-she has quite a way with ghosts, I understand. Amos may not be able to lift a wand against you, not at your time of life, but the Erinye sisters never bother about who's quick and who's not. Don't get too big for your boots, Simeon. You were never anything but a bully and a henchman."

"Dumbledore!" screeched the ghost with an ugly leer. Whispers wended their way through the ghostly gathering, and some of the silvery figures began to disperse. In the center of the circle, Azamos Nachtman gave a violent start.

"Perfidious Albion!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask the same thing of you, old friend," Dumbledore smiled kindly. "Facing your ghosts, I see."

"And you the most welcome of them all!" cried the thin man, tossing his fringes around his shoulders as he raced up the steps. "Blessed is God, _Mekhayeh Ha-Meitim!_ I had not thought to see you here, my friend. Since the trap they laid for you twenty-five years ago, I should have thought you would have stayed away!"

"As I recall," Dumbledore smiled, "That particular band of Death Eaters was none too successful. We were all unduly diverted by the notion that by planning their little denouement at the very gates of Nurmengard, they enabled themselves in the most efficient manner to join their idols on the other side of the doors. And, however little I am inclined to trust my person to the whims of Continental security, the Death Eaters have been for many years in abject retreat. Under the circumstances, I thought I might step across the Channel without undue peril and ruffle a few international feathers."

Nachtman smiled in remembrance. "Consider me ruffled!" he declared. "Of all the surprises of the season, this is the nicest by far."

"And you, my friend?" Dumbledore pressed on. "Considering the dangers you braved to escape from this place, I confessed myself equally surprised at your unexpected return."

"I came to say _Hallel_ in the place of my debasement," said Nachtman serenely. "To thank God for His inscrutable favors, for I came out again after I went in. I came to see these ruins with my own eyes, with my _tzitzit_ on my shoulders and my wand in my hand, to gaze on the destruction of everything they ever told me would outlive me."

"Still the adventurer after all these years," Dumbledore observed kindly. "And still such a daredevil! You really mustn't be so cavalier about the ghosts, Amos," Dumbledore warned. "They may not be over-powerful, but they're not chained to this haunted wreckage, either. I shouldn't tell them too much—you never know to whom they'll be inclined to repeat your history."

"Let them!" Nachtman waved his wand insouciantly. "The shade of a Jew-hater and a Muggle-baiter says I spoke to him in confidence… who would believe him? One or two raging fanatics who already know and can prove nothing? Let them stew in their own impotence and know I am happy."

"You've never underestimated your enemies before, Amos," Dumbledore admonished him. "It would be a pity to stumble even now."

Azamos Nachtman laughed out loud. "That's right, Albion. Scold! Tell me all the things I'm doing wrong that I may profit by your venerable instruction."

"And you'd listen to me now, after all these years?" Dumbledore laughed. "I should think I know better than to waste my breath."

"Come, come, Perfidious Albion!" Nachtman cried. "You're avoiding my question. What are you doing up here- you, the hero of the day? I expected you at the front of the stage with the others, covered with medals and showered with the accolades from those whom you delivered from destruction?"

Dumbledore looked at his friend impassively. "I am not needed there," he replied. "I am needed here."

Nachtman smiled wanly and clapped the old man on the shoulder. "You are a true hero, my friend."

"Stop pampering my overinflated ego or I will have to begin charging it rent!" insisted Dumbledore. "You survived Nurmengard! You walked into that torment a man of faith, and you walked out a man of faith. Despite all your suffering, you were able to rebuild your life with your wife and your family. And you call me a hero?"

"You saved us," pressed Nachtman. "You saved us all. Miriam would be the first to hang a medal on your hat if she were here."

"I did not save you all," Dumbledore sighed. "Do you expect me to forget the parade of souls who marched past me at Nurmengard when the doors at last were thrown open? The skeletons of ruined lives and burned dreams? You give me too much credit, Amos. For thousands of innocent souls, I came too late."

"What?" Nachtman prodded. "We should have been better if you'd never come at all? This was never your battle, Albion. You came when everyone worthier had been lost and betrayed. And if your not inconsiderable powers did not make you an infallible Redeemer, if perhaps there were things that could have been done better, then it only goes to show that you fall short of Almighty God. Who has been telling you that you ought to take the place of Almighty God, old man? That great white beard of yours?"

Dumbledore smiled. "Thank you, Amos. You always were a clever man at returning favors. Now tell me, how is my strongminded friend Mirabelle?"

"Too wise to be here!" Nachtman beamed. "And the longer we stay, the louder she will scoff at us both. Here we two friends have not clapped eyes on each other for twenty five years, and we should stand catching up in this creaking old ruin? I know a café all lined with mirrors where string quartets play waltzes and we can sit and drink coffee like old companions. Come, my friend!"

And with that, he seized Dumbledore's arm in a grip of steel, and turned. A whirlwind of gale force winds whipped up around their ears, and the two wizards vanished.

* * *

**Glossary:**

_Albion:_ a nickname for England.

_Asmodean:_ see "worm-magic."

_Azamos:_ an Ashkenazish name in its own right, pronounced in the German fashion, and not a derivative of the Hebrew prophet Amos in any way. Both Nachtman and Dumbledore follow the British custom of calling their friends by wee little nicknames. See Ezekiel 37:3 above for the source.

Beck's Rays: This horrible pun was too good to pass up. Apologies to RangerDov, whose villain I am shamelessly appropriating. Tell him to publish his story so you can see for yourself.

_Kraft:_ I defy canon in spelling this name with one f, as the good Lord intended. Look, if the warlock's name were in English, "Powwer" wouldn't look any less ridiculous. This choice is made a good deal easer by the facts that (A) I have not yet seen The Crimes of Grindelwald in theaters (I'm told I'm not missing much!) and (B) the community of well-read Jewish HP writers with whom I run does not hold with the Fantastic Beasts series at all, being too busy and too badly paid to indulge in the cinema with overmuch frequency. The same blatant disregard of canon will also explain Grindelwald's hench-witch Karrow, hereafter a false cognate for the British Death Eaters, the Carrows. I see Grindelwald and his crusade against the International Statute of Secrecy as a completely separate movement from the blood purity nutcases of the U.K.; as far as I'm concerned, one does not have to be the scion of a previous supervillain in order to spontaneously generate horrible prejudices in a new dawn of fear. It would be a good deal easier if the only people we needed to worry about in this day and age were the ones named Makayla Eichmann and Jayden Stalin.

_Mekhayeh Ha-Meitim:_ the blessing recited upon meeting a friend whom one has not seen in years and years. Further resonance with this chapter is unintentional.

_Worm-magic:_ a pejorative term for the traditional Semitic Arcanum, as thrown about by the few followers of Grindelwald who have managed to persevere both in anti-Muggle sentiment and Muggle-tastic anti-Semitism. The insult comes from the fact that European Jewish wizards crafted wands with cores of Ziz feather, Leviathan whisker, and skin of the rare _tola'at Yaakov._ Between the Worm of Jacob and the _shamir_, biblical magic involves more effluvia of magical worms than an old-fashioned Teutonic wizard feels he ought to tolerate. Jewish and Muslim wonder-workers also often tend to ignore the centuries-old ICW ban on conversing with demons and jinn-thus the pejorative nickname of _Asmodeans_. Gvr. Montefiore in Ch. 8 will be an unapologetic Asmodean through and through. And to be clear-

_Canon change: Dame J.K. Rowling has envisioned a magical world free of homophobia, anti-Semitism, and racism of all kinds, where witches and wizards need all their energy to bicker over bloodlines and political posturing. My Jewish colleagues look at the rise of Grindelwald in the 1930's and 1940's and find that those rose-colored glasses are a bit too tight to fit comfortably._

* * *

**Further Reading for Muggles:**

_Ezekiel 37:1-14,_ the valley of the dry bones. Dumbledore's grammar school education was a good eighty years before the Holocaust, so modern readers will make the connection more easily than he will.

_The Periodic Table_ and _Is This a Man?_ by Primo Levi. May the author's memory be for a blessing and may he find peace in Gan Eden to come.

_Panther in the Basement,_ by A. Oz. I see no resemblance between Albus Dumbledore and PC 4479, "Perfidious Albion, hands off of Zion!" –it's just a running joke between the Israeli wizard and the British one.

_If On a Winter's Night a Traveler,_ by Italo Calvino.

_Enchantress,_ by Maggie Anton.

* * *

_For Tikvah and Motherprayer. Many, many thanks to RangerDov for most his insight into Dumbledore's conscience._


	6. Chapter 5 - Coffee at the Zamenhof

**Chapter 5: Coffee at the Zamenhof**

* * *

_For my mother, who danced the Viennese waltz in silver brocade to open the ball. And many thanks to Uncle Rich for the magic box.  
_

* * *

_Moh oshiv l'Ashem, kol tagmulohi alayi: kos yeshuous esah, u'vshem Hashem ekra._

_How can I repay the LORD for all that God has done for me? I will raise a glass in salvation and call on the LORD by name. - Psalm 116:12-13_

The windstorm tore through the courtyard of Café Zamenhof as the two wizards appeared, scattering menus, toppling planters, and bending the branches of the overhanging rowan tree. Two elderly witches tutted disapprovingly into their coffee cups, but the mustachioed wizard at the back table lifted his red fez at them in greeting and winked understandingly as he summoned the pages of his newspaper back onto his table.

"I think I left my ears somewhere over Poland," groaned Dumbledore, emerging cautiously from the dissipating whirlwind. "I will never get used to the Eastern way of apparating!"

"And I," replied Nachtman good-naturedly, "will never appreciate the Western way, departing and arriving everywhere in the most ostentatious crack of thunder!"

A hassled-looking witch in a black silk gown scurried out of the café, brandishing her wand this way and that as she righted flowerpots and retrieved silverware. She huffed a sigh of much-tested patience as she turned to the newcomers. "Table for two, gentlemen?"

"Your finest table for the man of the hour!" cried Nachtman gallantly. "Here stands the wizard who brought down the Iron Triangle. We have come to celebrate Liberation Day in style at the sign of the Zamenhof!"

The waitress almost fell over herself ushering them into the gilt and ivory interior of the old Viennese coffeehouse. "Welcome, welcome! Step this way, if you please…! Let me tell the manageress that the mighty Dumpeldor—such an honor, sir!"

The glass doors swung open, and the warm air hit Dumbledore's face like a blessing. He inhaled the mouthwatering scents of butter, cinnamon, coffee, and chocolate. A great brazier stood by the door; he warmed his throbbing fingers over it even as the heat fogged up his half-moon spectacles. A delicious warmth spread over him, and he gratefully wriggled out of his fur-lined cloak, which flew obediently to a hook on the wall after the fluttering waitress.

"That wonderful smell!" beamed Nachtman. "I could appear here blindfolded and Confounded, and I should know where I was on the instant. How long since you've been here, Albion?"

"It's been more than ten years, Amos," replied the old man, surveying the twinkling chandeliers with a pleased eye, "since I've drunk Kaffee Einspänner at the Zamenhof. You are entirely forgiven for Shanghaiing me so audaciously, and when I take my first bite of Millirahmstrudel, I will undoubtedly forgive you for the unnecessary fuss as well."

At this moment, the kitchen door burst open, and a stout little old witch in golden robes sashayed into the room. "Wulfric!" she cried with pleasure. "What a surprise!"

"Madam Zellermeistrin!" Dumbledore inclined his head with a smile. "How lovely to see you again, with the old Zamenhof in all its glory. Still the best pastry from Brussels to Bialystok?"

"Surely you don't doubt it, Wulfric?" smiled the manageress. "And still the most _gemütlich_ coffeehouse in Vienna. Azamos, _wie geht's?_ What brings you back after all these years?"

"We are celebrating Liberation Day, Taubhilde!" Nachtman twirled his wand. "And catching up on twenty five years of this wild old man's doings. Keep the coffee flowing, for we have many deep-laid plans to see to. And don't let the Englishman even reach for his wallet, because I am not a threadbare young wizard anymore and today, I am paying."

"As if for a moment I'd let you!" scolded the old witch. "The great Dumpeldor sets foot in my cafe for the first time in ten years! Think yourselves lucky I don't call the newspapers!"

A small table in the corner shot up a fountain of golden sparks. The Zellermeistrin directed her wand, and a white tablecloth blossomed up to catch the shower; pastries, cheese toasts, and chocolates settled into position atop a splendid three-tiered tea tray. A tall gilt-edged coffee pot poured its steaming brew into tall glass mugs, and a little china pot hovered regally in midair, dispensing whipped cream over the top. Cinnamon and chocolate dusted themselves generously across the tops of each portion as Nachtman and Dumbledore pulled back their chairs and made themselves comfortable.

"Do either of the gentlemen wish a newspaper?" inquired the proprietress formally, sprinkling the final touches of cocoa and adding a Pirouline to each mug.

"No, indeed!" Nachtman smiled up at her. "We are the news around here, I should think."

* * *

"So this Muggle dustman looks over and says, 'I don't care what that magic box says, but my hand's sticking out this here window, and I says it's raining now!'" Nachtman chuckled heartily into his coffee. "And Zagota is just standing there over his shining invention while the rain pours down the window panes!"

"Some things," Dumbledore sighed, "like moonshine and grammar, were simply never meant to be drawn out to their logical conclusions. Remember the one about the werewolf and the schoolmaster?"

Azamos threw back his head with a grin and obligingly began to sing, "_Ein Werwolf eines Nachts entwich / von Weib und Kind und sich begab / an eines Dorfschullehrers Grab / und bat ihn: Bitte, beuge mich!"_

Dumbledore contributed his rich baritone:

_"__Der Werwolf" — sprach der gute Mann,  
__"__Des Weswolfs," Genitiv sodann,  
__"__Dem Wemwolf," Dativ, wie man's nennt,  
__"__Den Wenwolf," — "damit hat's ein End"._

Several patrons looked up from under their pointy hats as the two men belted out the lyrics, but a table full of Holda mothers put down their spindles to join in:

_Zwar Wölfe gäb's in großer Schar,  
__doch "Wer" gäb's nur im Singular…!_

And the waitress herself, levitating a tray of Sachertorte in her wake, finished the lines in a high, warbling soprano as she sashayed past:

_Doch da er kein Gelehrter eben,  
__so schied er dankend und ergeben._

"Poor werewolf," smiled Nachtman as the other patrons drew their chairs in and returned to their newspapers. "To be parted forever from his wife and child over the nuances of German grammar."

"I've always considered it an urban myth," Albus insisted. "Warning the didactic magician about relying on one's teachers for every answer. Speaking of wife and child, my friend, how are yours?"

"All the better for your asking," Azamos smiled. "Miriam trains a dozen or so new midwives every year and plays tambourine with the _Meshorerot_ on Saturday nights. Anna keeps her namesake's legacy alive in international relations. Azariah is still doing his army service in the _No First Use_ brigade, training Muggle-borns and doing group therapy sessions. Tikva's learning to embroider lifelines from an old master in Jaffa—beautiful needlework, though she doesn't make much money. And Noadia is in school up in Tzfat; we hope she'll be working for Gevirah Montifiore and Imma-Shalom next year. We never see half of them, of course, but we all took a holiday to Kuzaria for Chanukah, and it was good to be all together for a change."

"How was Atil?" inquired Dumbledore, helping himself to another piece of apricot strudel.

"Glorious!" Nachtman tipped back his chair and sighed in pure pleasure. "Medieval and ancient and utterly spectacular. The torchlight processions for Chanukah began in the Kagan's courtyard, and the bearers parade into the streets, lighting each candelabrum at the door of each house and business until the entire city glows with light. We watched the great joust for the Shortest Day-it was marvelous. And the Kagan's library...! Did you know, old man, they have scrolls in from long before the Roman conquest?"

"I did, indeed!" Dumbledore assured him. "Did you get to see the _Sefer Ha Jaschar?"_

"I did!" his friend grinned. "And the last extant copy of the _Sefer Milchamos HaShem-_ so enormous the Kagan's priests use two poles to carry it."

Dumbledore's eyes sparkled. "As a gentile, I've never been allowed even the smallest glimpse. What was it like, the Book of Divine Warfare?"

Nachtman rolled his eyes as he topped off his coffee. "Nationalistic claptrap of the worst kind: bellicose and puerile in the plain text and underneath, Bible codes carrying the most horrific dark magic. Anyone who could sit through all those chants not asphyxiate in disgust is precisely the kind of person that should not be reading it. You can see why the Sages banned its printing and told the world it had been lost forever."

Dumbledore nodded. "Not a bad job, considering that it's memorialized in Second Samuel for all the Muggles in Judaea and Christendom to see."

Nachtman shrugged. "The last Khazar warlords fool enough to use it left us the Crater of Samandar to memorialize their smoking remains. It's a fairly safe bet that's when the book passed out of living memory." He sank his teeth into a plum tart and sighed with pleasure. "I do believe this is the best almond pastry that has ever passed my lips."

"You said that in Paris!" Dumbledore reminded him with a smile. "When we saw Josephine Baker at the Folies Bergère?"

"Ah, yes!" Nachtman clapped his hands and laughed. "That corpulent old miser in front of us called her a pagan caterwauler and an African monkey, and Miriam 'accidentally' lit his trousers on fire with her cigarette holder and fanned the flames in panic as she apologized. What a day that was." He helped himself to another slice of apple strudel. "But enough about my gallivanting about the globe. How are you, Perfidious Albion? How goes this international _tournier_ we have been hearing about?"

"An utter fiasco," the old man replied, calmly dabbing whipped cream off his moustache. "I could trade tales with Codswallop the Cobblepot regarding noble enterprises hopelessly muddled by uninspired execution. Try not to ask me about the U.K.'s Ministry of Magic… a more self-important clan of bumbling bees I never could have assembled. From the moment that they took over my Tri-Wizard tournament, they've bungled everything. Not even a single writer or judge from the Continent bothers to show their face, and even the British press is left in the hands of an incompetent harpy whose only talent is to make the rest of us look virtuous by comparison. We have two dozen bright young people receiving an excellent education in my castle, and no one knows anything about it. Moreover, my European colleagues suspect me of cheating, which is sauce to the goose."

"I thought cheating was a time-honored part of the Tri-Wizard tournament," smiled Nachtman, his eyes twinkling. "What was it that the Marquise Remarque remarked? 'It's not even cheating / As prudence dictated / Lest the _tournier_ contestant be incinerated?'"

"I'm not talking about the students!" the headmaster protested. "In the fourteenth century, the whole point of the tournament was to kill off the competition for the post of Supreme Mugwump and let winner take all! Fair play is hardly fair when it's your life on the line and everyone else is just waving handkerchiefs in the lists. The whole structure is designed to reward anyone devious enough to find out what they'll be facing and adequately prepare for it. But the whole point of bringing back this fantastically dangerous enterprise was to build ground for international cooperation! If the so-called adults are going to start hexing their opponents and clearing the way for their star pupil, we'll be building grudge matches instead of allies and only making matters worse!"

Nachtman considered his friend. "And you have not at all been tempted to—how you say—place a thumb on the scale, Albion? For your own star pupil?"

"Me? Never!" persevered Dumbledore, hiding his guilty expression behind his napkin. "I'm not interested in giving my school double advantage, not in the slightest, and when I find which member of my staff is responsible, they will find me most unsympathetic! I should be very happy if one of the Continental champions should carry off the honors across the Channel and back to a grateful community." He licked his fingers modestly and turned his attention to the soggy biscuit in his coffee glass. "However, my virtuous behavior notwithstanding, everything I say to reassure other headmasters only makes them suspect me more. I can only suppose that the selfsame rascal who is trying to sow discord and enmity in my chambers is doing an equally thorough job in theirs. Wretched little horse-pooka, whoever he is."

Azamos frowned and pushed his plate away. "You think someone is deliberately sabotaging your plans for international goodwill? A spy?"

"No question!" Dumbledore waved his hand airily. "A terrible one, I'm sure. I came by a misfortune teller when I was holidaying on Mont Saint Michel for the Epiphany. _From November 31, _it said, _will come bad fortune, yea, and sneak under thy very nose to end all thy plans in treachery and darkness. _ Ruined a perfectly good game of tiddlywinks with the French proconsul, though I undoubtedly should have been getting back anyway. Of course, the cursed paper was trying to drive a wedge between me and my foreign colleagues, but I utterly refuse to rise to the bait."

Azamos hissed through his teeth. "Damnable luck! Do you know who sent it?"

Dumbledore smiled unconcernedly. "Of course! Harun-Idagh ibn Haddad, whose wife is no longer sitting on the International Confederation of Wizards now that someone directed undue attention to that little nastiness in East Jerusalem. He told Shabanu Shafiq that he would see misfortune come to me for all my meddling. Very childish of him. I was surprised he couldn't think of anything more trying."

"You are not concerned about this?" his friend scowled.

"Why should I be?" replied Albus. "The whole point of the trick is for the unfortunate recipient to blunder about trying to avoid the inevitable, and eventually bring the calamity upon himself by assiduously trying to prevent it. Remember what happened to that old Greek warlock with the swollen feet! Mark my words, there will be nothing but trouble until the Tri-Wizard Tournament is over: I could have told him as much myself."

Azamos was unconvinced. "Don't you think it would be safer to withdraw from the tournament, or cancel it? That kind of trouble, you don't need."

"And if there's anything on which the international papers would cry foul on base treachery," said Dumbledore, finishing the last of his coffee with a satisfied burp. "It would be the host school pulling out before the final showdown because the Durmstrang candidate is ahead and the Britons are sore losers. Nothing to be done but sail on and meet the storm when it comes."

"And the 31st of November?" Nachtman refused to be diverted. "Some sort of crazy Syrian leap year? There is no such date."

"Just another parlor trick to baffle the gullible," Albus assured him calmly. "Lord Voldemort—the Muggle-baiting blood purist of the U.K.—was vanquished on the last day of October; the Ministry of Magic rounded up his servants and henchmen that same November. Thirty-one of them were tried for conspiracy and crimes against wizardkind; by some small coincidence, several notable persons involved in those trials can be found in high positions in this tournament, including both my sponsoring members of the Ministry of Magic, my colleague the headmaster of Durmstrang, and that horrid little witch from the Daily Prophet whom I've already banned from the grounds. Here I am trying to rally the great and the good; this wretched hex is trying to part me from my supporters in the English ministry as well as colleagues abroad, while blinding me to trouble fomenting elsewhere. It is maddening beyond belief."

"So what is the great English wizard going to do to foil the ill wishes of his enemies?" Nachtman probed.

"Do?" Dumbledore was unruffled. "Nothing at all. I refuse to play into the hands of my ill-wishers by sabotaging my hard-forged connections. My most comprehensive efforts have uncovered no wrongdoing—at least, nothing beyond the usual small-minded mischief."

"You're mad!" Azamos set down his spoon with an angry click. "This Syrian scoundrel curses your international enterprise and you do… nothing? I faced down a hundred malevolent ghosts in a cursed ruin this morning, and even I call that foolhardy!"

"Oh, I didn't say I haven't prepared for the worst. I have prepared very thoroughly indeed. But there's no point in hexing the reporter for the bad news he delivers: the calamity will happen whether or not Wizarding Wireless dispatches an announcer. The only point of a misfortune teller is to pile anxiety and self-recrimination onto that which is already coming. The real miscreant is, as the cursed paper told me, already under my very nose, and the more I try to spot him, the more unfortunate I will become. So, I sent a powerful hex in the form of an administrative invoice to all of my colleagues at the Ministry and the Daily Prophet, co-signed by my trusty fellow heads of school, and if anyone tries to betray me after signing that piece of parchment, they will have all too short a time to reflect on the error of their ways before being relegated to the Great Public Examples of British History. As for the rest, I do my limbering exercises before breakfast, drink a glass of warm milk at bedtime, and wait." He toasted Nachtman with his empty glass.

Azamos raised his eyebrows. "And never let this little catastrophe prey on your mind at all."

"Dear me, Amos, how well you spot a liar," smiled his friend pleasantly. "I must work harder to cultivate my natural humility. Too that end, however, Harun should have the satisfaction of seeing how well his hex has blighted my prospects, and to that end, I have subscribed him to every news article ever printed or yet to be printed on the Tri-Wizard tournament or any of its participants at any time, that he may not miss a single moment of my discomfiture."

Azamos ran his tongue over his teeth as he figured. "Isn't one of the contestants an international Quidditch champion?"

"And another on our Ministry's side, retired," smiled Dumbledore. "Not to mention the most prolific gossip columnist in The U.K. and the national hero of Britain, the Boy Who Lived. By my calculations, it will be only two years before the house is so overrun with newsprint, magazines, and owl droppings that its owners will be forced to abandon the premises."

Nachtman barked a laugh. "And here I worried that old age was catching up with you. You're still the same wicked old man who painted a fresco of his own nether parts on the ceiling of that Italian teamster who made off with your camera and took naughty pictures with it."

Dumbledore winked. "One must exorcise one's inner demons somehow. How else can I maintain this façade of absentminded harmlessness?"

"You never cease to amaze me, old man," smiled Nachtman reflectively. "After all the things we have seen, I never see you give in to the bitterness. With you, everything is the light touch."

"Water striders do rather well for themselves, I've always thought," said Dumbledore nonchalantly. "Good old _aquarius remiges._ The undercurrents in the depths are powerful enough to pull even a strong swimmer under. Sufficient unto yesterday is the evil thereof; I'm sure there's a psalm for that somewhere. We must never cease to be grateful for all that survived, Amos."

"I raise a glass for our salvation," Nachtman solemnly poured more coffee into his glass. "Blessed is the One who enabled us to see this day."

"Amen," answered his friend, clinking his own mug. "And may we remember it all our days, in stormy seas and calm water."

"_All the days of your life,_ the Sages say." Azamos drained his glass. "They never said in the Telling that redemption would bespeak peace of mind as well. Thank you, my friend, for the good memories to sweeten the bitterness. Next year, we must do this again."

"And on that note," remarked Albus, folding his napkin. "Several important people have no doubt discovered my absence and are jumping to unwarranted conclusions. I thank you most sincerely for this truly restorative interlude, and do send my most sincere compliments to the estimable Mirabelle."

"I shall do so!" Nachtman assured him. "Hearing how my adventure ended, she will be quite sorry to have missed you. And now, I shall flag down the estimable Zellermeistrin with the bill."

A masque of courtesy was enacted over the check, settled with great finality by a water nixie discussing urban drainage with the Burgomaster at the counter, who paid in full on condition that the lot of them stop dithering and get on with their business. Nachtman said a quick _brachah acharonah_ over his empty dishes while Dumbledore wrapped himself in his heavy cloak.

"Someday, you must come by us!" Nachtman urged, joining him at the front of the house. "We'll watch the sun rise on the terrace and pour wine into the glass of hope."

Dumbledore arched his eyebrows. "Next year in Jerusalem, as they say?"

Azamos laughed with pleasure. "Next year, in Jerusalem! I'll hold you to it, old man."

* * *

**Glossary:**

_Bek:_ hereditary warlord of the Khazars

_Brachah acharonah: _a blessing after food

_Der Werwolf:_ a poem by Christian Morgenstern-see appendix below.

_Gemütlich:_ that jolly spirit of relaxed camaraderie (German) that the English call "Hail-fellow-well-met." This is the only instance I know where the English is actually longer than the German. Sheez.

_Kagan:_ head of state and high priest of the Khazars. Readers will see the Hebrew word _Kohen_ translated through Slavic, where the "_h_" becomes a "_g,_" as per the Jewish name _Kagan_ or _Cagan._

_Kuzaria: _Khazaria, the ninth century empire whose warlord refused to take sides in the thousand-year conflict between Rome (Christiantity) and Persia (Islam), and staked out a middle ground by converting the whole kingdom to Judaism. The short-lived kingdom was wiped out a century later by the Uzbeks, the Rus, and the like. Twelfth-century Spanish mystic Yehudah HaLevi built on the mystical tradition in his philosophical magnum opus _The Kuzari, _while contemporary author Michael Chabon rediscovered this world of sword and sorcery in his novel _Gentlemen of the Road. _Unfortunately, the rest of the literature is wholly populated by anti-Semitic conspiracy nuts, and so the reader is strongly discouraged from inquiring further; the whole enterprise may best be covered by the sands of time for the sake of peace between neighbors.

_Kafee Einspänner:_ Viennese coffee, as described

_Pirouline:_ Vienna wafers are not really Viennese, as per the French horn, which is actually German, not to be confused with the _Cor Anglaise_ (the English horn), which is French.

_Sefer ha-Yashar_: "The Book of Rightness," a lost book of the Bible, as per Numbers 21:14. Dumbledore is using the Lutheran spelling but pronouncing the word as shown here.

_Sefer Milchamot Hashem:_ another lost book of the Bible, as per Joshua 10:13 and Shmuel Bet (Second Samuel) 1:18. The Jewish Sages seem to have decided that "The Book of God's Wars" was not worthy of the final cut, and I don't question their judgement for a moment.

_Tzfat:_ the city of Safed in northern Israel

_Tournier:_ tournament (French, Hebrew, et. al.)

_Wie geht's:_ how goes it (German)

* * *

**Appendix:****_ The Werewolf,_**** by Christian Morgenstern**

This eighteenth-century bout of comic verse is one of the few good things I discovered in eleventh grade high school German (shared with me by Mom, she should live and be well, and completely disregarded by the odious Frau Our Instructress). It mocks the heck out of German's tendency to conjugate every noun, very, adjective, interrogative, and helpless little article within an inch of its life. As such, it is almost completely untranslatable: the English word "where" must be rendered four different ways in the German, leading the poor werewolf to come beg at the village schoolmaster's grave in order to conjugate himself properly. The ghost is as helpful as can be, until the grateful creature points out that he has left a wife and child at home, and therefore they must begin the entire exercise over again in the plural.

The following verse, © 1989 by Alexander Gross, tries to convey the comedy to the English speaker. Those craving a more thorough response are invited to peruse "That Awful German Language" by Mark Twain for more in the same vein.

_A Werewolf, troubled by his name,  
__Left wife and child one night and came  
__To a hidden graveyard to enlist  
__The aid of a long-dead philologist._

_"Oh sage, wake up, please don't berate me,"  
__He howled sadly, "Just conjugate me."  
__The seer arose a bit unsteady  
__Yawned twice, wheezed once, and then was ready._

_"Well, `Werewolf' is your plural past,  
__While `Waswolf' is singularly cast:  
__There's `Amwolf' too, the present tense,  
__And `Iswolf,' `Arewolf' in this same sense."_

_"I know that-I'm no mental cripple-  
__The future form and participle  
__Are what I crave," the beast replied.  
__The scholar paused-again he tried:_

_"A `Will-be-wolf?' It's just too long:  
__`Shall-be-wolf?' `Has-been-wolf?' Utterly wrong!  
__Such words are wounds beyond all suture-  
__I'm sorry, but you have no future."_

_The Werewolf knew better-his child still slept  
__At home, and homewards now he crept,  
__Happy, humble, without apology  
__For such folly of philology._

This charming poem above has only the slightest connection with the original Morgenstern, presented here for contrast by the overeducated nerd. Notice how the werewolf needs a new name every time it changes from the nominative case to the accusative, dative, and genitive.

_Ein Werwolf eines Nachts entwich  
__von Weib und Kind und sich begab  
__an eines Dorfschullehrers Grab  
__und bat ihn: »Bitte, beuge mich!«_

_Der Dorfschulmeister stieg hinauf  
__auf seines Blechschilds Messingknauf  
__und sprach zum Wolf, der seine Pfoten  
__geduldig kreuzte vor dem Toten:_

_»Der Werwolf«, sprach der gute Mann,  
__»des Weswolfs, Genitiv sodann,  
__dem Wemwolf, Dativ, wie mans nennt,  
__den Wenwolf, - damit hats ein End.«_

_Dem Werwolf schmeichelten die Fälle,  
__er rollte seine Augenbälle.  
__»Indessen«, bat er, »füge doch  
__zur Einzahl auch die Mehrzahl noch!«_

_Der Dorfschulmeister aber mußte  
__gestehn, dass er von ihr nichts wußte.  
__Zwar Wölfe gäbs in grosser Schar,  
__doch »Wer« gäbs nur im Singular._

_Der Wolf erhob sich tränenblind-  
__er hatte ja doch Weib und Kind!  
__Doch da er kein Gelehrter eben,  
__so schied er dankend und ergeben._


End file.
